Royal Mail list the thicknesses that are allowed, but they all go in the same letterbox so I assume their machines can handle it
Comment on Royal Mail waives £5 penalty charge for fake stamps
lud@lemm.ee 2 months agoMy postal agency dislikes when you send objects that aren’t small in letters for example keys. The odds are quite large that the automatic sorting machines will tear the letter open and/or the letter will get stuck in the machinery.
smeg@feddit.uk 2 months ago
echodot@feddit.uk 2 months ago
They take pictures of the letters as they come in from all angles, and then a computer algorithm builds a 3D structure of the letter so they know how big it is and which machines it can and can’t go through if it’s too big to go through a particular machine it gets redirected to another process. Also they have metal detectors so the keys would be detected right away.
Maybe in the '90s this was a problem with large items in envelopes but not anymore because they can detect it before it gets anywhere near the problem machine.
They have a whole list of things you can and can’t post and one of the things you can post is live insects so obviously they’re not mangling everything to an auto sorter.
lud@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Maybe, I was just thinking about a video our postal company released a few years ago that said what I said.